


All In Time

by mortalitasi



Series: into the forest [9]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, General, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2196585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During which Nathaniel finds himself intensely grateful for the Commander's continued survival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All In Time

He watches her climb the stairs with a wary eye.

"Be careful."

"Stop mothering me, Nathaniel," she says, frowning in exertion as she ascends the last two stairs on the parapet and grasps at one of the torch handles jutting out from the wall for support. A breath whooshes out of her in a low rush and the muscles of her shoulders relax and loosen under her tunic.

He narrows his eyes at her. “You shouldn’t exert yourself.”

Lyna laughs and then grimaces in pain as the action makes the wound in her side pull. “Ah, blast!” She puts a hand to her ribs and then starts hobbling towards him. “I can’t very well lie around all day, either. I’ll go mad if I don’t do something.”

It’s the first time they’ve been outside since they returned from the Wending Wood. He’s amazed that she lasted as long. The Commander doesn’t do well inside walls. 

She stumbles a bit but he’s there, putting a hand around her elbow and letting her steady herself in her own time. He clicks his tongue in disapproval at her wince of discomfort and tries to bite down on the insecurity that wells up at the thought of putting an arm around her. It’s not as if they’re a secret— anyone with two eyes and a brain between their ears can see what’s happening— and yet something stops him, all the same. Propriety, perhaps. Fear.

He still remembers the strike of the cane against his back and the voice of Matron Howe, strident and unhappy. Always unhappy. She wouldn’t have been satisfied even had she managed to wring all the good and positive out of him. She wouldn’t have stopped until he was another Rendon, discontent with his lot in life and ready to do anything to make the world give him what he thought it owed him. How close she came, too— and how she hated elves.

Lyna touches her hand to his, feather-light, and it’s enough to start him out of his thinking. “It’s alright,” she says simply, looking up at him with no expectant light in her eyes, as though she can see straight through him, down to the smallest pettiness and the whitest little lie. “You don’t have to do anything.”

Her fingers move under his and lace through them, strong and tight and reassuring. She understands. As always. He stares, following the fall of her loosely-tied hair, the hunched curve of her shoulders, turned inward in pain, ever so slight, and the edge of the purpling bruise peeking out from beneath the hem of her nightshirt.

He remembers holding her, one palm pressed clumsily against her leathers, the blood trickling between his fingers, sticky and hot and too important for her to be losing; the dull pain in his throat when he realized she’d shut her eyes and fallen away from the waking world, the burning in his eyes when he’d gathered her in his arms, her as light as a child’s toy, hands hanging limply, one cheek leaned on his collarbone, chilled and pale. He remembers the dry rustle of reeds when he’d laid her to rest on the mats on the floor of the apostate’s hut, and thinking that he wouldn’t want to live knowing that was the last sound he’d heard from her.

She’d spoken much in her fevered sleep, turning and tossing and murmuring names he’d only known from her stories, sometimes shouting, sometimes striking out with fists, sometimes weeping like she’d lost the world from underneath her, and he’d held her then, too, waiting until the shaking passed and the yelling died away, wiping the hair from her brow and praying that the quiet would last.

That he wouldn’t have to listen to her apologize to phantoms again and again, or to cry for the only mother she’d ever known.

He’d thought then, if she were to open her eyes again, he’d tell her. But here they are— and he is still thinking of Matron Howe, long gone, and the ghostly presence of her lectures and her cane, and suddenly it irritates him keenly that she still frightens him so. He is no longer the wisp of a boy, his father’s shame. He is Grey Warden, Nathaniel, and the shadow of the Howe name has been scattered. So he grasps back at her hand, and runs his thumb over her knuckles.

"No," he says, "it’s not alright."

"Nathaniel…?"

He steps nearer, and slides an arm under hers. Then he bends, and despite her questioning gaze, kisses her softly, the point of his nose skimming her cheek. He touches his brow to hers, hands still clasped.

"I don’t mind," he tells her, meaning every word. "Let them see."

She smiles at him— and that’s all the answer he needs.


End file.
